Sorry I've Been Gone

I want to apologize for not writing in so long. Today I took the typewriter out of my closet for the first time since before Christmas Break just to look and see if anyone had said anything, or even if anything at all was there except a piece of glass screwed onto a Selectric.

I'll be honest with you: I was scared. After coming home and finding an inexplicable machine sitting on my bed, with instructions to use it as a diary that will be read by people I can't see, I was afraid.

The thing intimidated me, so I hid it away in the closet along with the camera and tried to forget about it as I enjoyed Christmas with my family, celebrated New Year's Eve with my friends, and went back to school on January 4th.

The truth is, a real part of me thought I was crazy. Here I was, ostensibly confiding my innermost thoughts to a group of magic-typewriter people who are supposedly from the future, and, to top it off, talk back to me. I thought for a while that I was just imagining everything and that maybe I had Schizophrenia or something, which would make sense since the letter I found with the typewriter told me not to ever reveal its existence to anyone I know.

Then, though, I thought about it. I prayed, and I reflected, and I knew in my heart that I hadn't been inventing anything in my mind. It was real. So, reasoning that God sometimes provides us with strange paths to follow, and that this can hardly be described as anything else, I have resolved to follow the guidelines I was given.

I guess I'm supposed to just write about what happens to me, so I'll start.

Christmas was really, really fun.

My father got me a new record player, which is probably the best gift ever and I know cost a lot of money. We had one a few years ago, but John and Lewis got into a fight in the living room one time and broke it. Wow, was Dad angry.

I've been listening to Beatles records over at Dan's house, but now I can actually have my own, which will be so cool!

For New Year's Eve I went over to Dan's house, where we hung out with Brandon and Roberta. Roberta is this pretty girl with pale skin, blue eyes, and the most ridiculous frizzy red hair that goes way down her back, almost to her waist. She's a Junior like us, while Brandon, who's new to our group, is a year younger. He's really cool, though.

He lives next door to Dan, and he just moved here from Richmond. He's pretty tall, and he has short brown hair and brown eyes and when he laughs he sounds a little bit like a chipmunk, because his voice is sort of high even though he looks older than fifteen.

I relly like him. He said that the strangest thing about moving here is the cold, since they don't really get winter all the way down in Richmond. I thought it was strange that there could be such major differences just inside of one state, but Virginia is pretty big.

Anyway, Dan's older brother Richie is home from college in New York, and he gave us a couple of beers if we promised not to tell that he let us have them. He's twenty and he's really awesome. He knows everything about everything involved with music, and his hair looks just like John Lennon's from the Beatles.

We went back into the woods and each of us had a beer, even Roberta, and we were pretty wobbly when we came back into the house just before midnight. We got lucky, because Dan's parents were at a party across town and they expected Richie to "watch" us, even though we're in 11th grade.

My father didn't know that only Richie would be there, otherwise he never would have let me go. He thinks I need a babysitter even though I'll be seventeen in May and practically a man.

We watched the ball drop in New York and welcomed in 1965. It seems so crazy to write that year down. In my head it's still 1962 and I'm fourteen years old, just starting high school. 1965 seems so unrealistic, like a date in the far future that we were never supposed to reach. Just think, five years from now it will be 1970 and I'll be twenty-one! That's actually a little scary.

My resolutions for this year are to do well in school, go to church more, pay more attention to politics (especially since that's what I want to study in college), become less shy about singing in front of other people, and stand up for myself better.

I get made fun of a lot.

Probably the only bad thing that happened over Christmas was at work. I work at the grocery store in town on weekends and when school isn't in, and there's this guy there named Tony who's always bothering me. He's big and a Senior at my school, and he always accuses me of being a homo.

A lot of people think that because I'm skinny and I like music and art and my hair is long. That's so stupid, though. Just because a person doesn't play football, or just because his interests are in more intellectual areas like reading and writing, doesn't mean that he's gay.

In the break room Tony kept ragging on me in front of everyone. I was really uncomfortable and the assistant manager could tell, but he didn't do anything.

"Tony, lay off," I finally said.

I didn't even say it that loud. I just felt like I had to do something; what kind of man takes being mocked without doing anything back?

He jumped up from the table and said, "What did you say, faggot?"

"I'm not a faggot," I replied, even though I really was scared.

He moved so fast that I didn't even see him. One minute I was standing there, and the next it was like the floor had fallen out from under me, because he'd gotten me in a headlock.

"Maybe the faggot needs a haircut," he said, and people were actually laughing.

Then he pulled me across the room by my ponytail, which they make me wear at work, and he said he was going to make me look like a boy and not a sissy girl. I thought he was really going to do it, and I was fighting to push him off of me but he was a lot bigger.

Finally, Joe, the assistant manager, got in the middle of it.

"Tony," he said. I couldn't see what he was doing, but his arm was going over me toward where Tony's shoulder was. All the blood had rushed to my head and my face was searing with the heat of the struggle and the humiliation. "If you knock that boy up, I have to fire you."

"So he should just get to walk around here looking like some Beatnik butt-humper?" Tony asked.

"I know," Joe said, looking at me like I was wrong. "But that's how it is."

Tony let me go and said, "You're lucky I don't hit girls."

Then he spit in my face.

I'd been trying really hard not to cry, but after that I couldn't help it, and the tears started leaking out of the corners of my eyes.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Aaron," Joe said. "Look, why don't you go home for the day before you cause any more incidents?"

I boiled with indignation.

That red-neck Neanderthal had insulted me, then resorted to physical violence against me when I dared to respond. Yet I was being treated as if I were the aggressor.

I lied to my mother and told her business was slow at the store, but it was a Saturday morning so I think she figured out I probably wasn't telling the truth. I haven't had any hours there since that happened, and I think I might try to find a different job for the summer.

Stuff like that really upsets me, but when it happens I try to be the bigger person and just walk away, knowing that God wants me to do what's right and will eventually guide me to prosperity and happiness.

So far school has been good. Brandon is in a few of my classes with Dan, which is nice, and we've been hanging out a lot.

Most of the people who bother me are Seniors, and I'm really happy that they'll be graduating this June; after they're gone, I think my life at Central High School will be really good.

By the way, I've noticed something about this typewriter: it has an inborne censoring device. Aaron is not actually my name, and Central High School isn't what my school is called, but every time I try to type either one in, the typewriter changes them. I've written my actual name over and over again: Aaron, Aaron, Aaron. Still, it always comes out Aaron.

Anyway, I'll be writing more about some of my New Year's resolutions later. I already fulfilled one of them by watching President Johnson's State of the Union Address on January 4th, the night after I started back at school. I also watched his inauguration on January 20th. He is such an inspiring man, and I'm excited about where our country can go under his leadership.

I guess you'll hear more from me soon.

In Class Today

We had a really interesting activity today in Government. Mrs. Schieffer, our teacher, assigned us each to different countries, and then we had to negotiate as if we were in the U.N.

One half of the class was good countries, like the United States and Britain, and the other half was bad countries, like the Soviet Union.

My group got the United States, and I was Secretary of State while a boy named Daniel was President. In any decision we made, both he and I had to sign for authorization, which meant that there was some negotiation going on within as well as between groups.

One of my initiatives was to bring the three good countries, the U.S., Britain, and West Germany, into a mutual defense pact. The Soviet Union, China, and Vietnam made their own defense pact against us.

Halfway through, Mrs. Schieffer broke the Vietnam group in two, with one side as North Vietnam and the other side as South Vietnam.

Daniel, the President of the United States, wanted to send our troops in, but I said that then we might wind up going to war with the Soviet Union, a situation I felt we should avoid at all costs since we both had atomic weapons.

I wouldn't go along with the declaration of war, so we reached a compromise: we brought South Vietnam into our defense pact and gave them economic aid. The biggest threat to our side was that the Soviet Union would invade South Vietnam, because if a democracy falls during the exercise then the democratic bloc loses the simulation.

I figured that since the people of South Vietnam wanted to be free there was no threat of the government being overthrown from within, and that the best thing we could do was protect against a Soviet assault. Because the Soviet Union side didn't want to go to war with the U.S., Britain, and West Germany just to gain South Vietnam, the plan worked.

The South Vietnam group took the foreign aid we gave them and invested it in capitalism, and at the end of the simulation they had a good economy.

I wonder if President Johnson could do that in real life, and then we wouldn't have to have a war there. Maybe someone should tell him that.

A Little Bit About Me

My name is Aaron and I am sixteen years old. Yesterday, I found a note on my bed saying that I should write down all my thoughts and feelings using this special typewriter, so here it is.

I am a high school junior living in Virginia who loves music, politics, reading, writing, and movies. I also enjoy hanging out with my friends.

Like I said, I'm sixteen, but for some reason this thing keeps saying I'm sixty-one. I've entered my birthday (May 1, 1948) three times, but it still comes out wrong. Maybe it's getting the 1 and the 6 mixed up.

I'm kind of skinny and I have long hair, and some of the kids at school make fun of me because I'm not very athletic, but I have some really close friends who mean a lot to me so it's okay.

My father owns a construction company and makes a lot of money and my mother stays at home. I have three siblings: John, who's fifteen; Lewis, who's nine; and Lynn, who's one.

I said earlier that I'm political, and my parents are, too. My father voted for President Johnson because we agree with his Great Society reforms, but I'm not sure how I feel about Vietnam. I agree that we can't let communism spread, but it seems unfair to draft people who don't really want to go to war. Anyway, that's about it.

If you want the full story of how I came to be writing here, see my post below.

Hello?

My name is Aaron. I am very confused.

I'm confused because a very strange thing happened when I got home from my friend Dan's house today, and I'm still trying to make sense of it.

I spent most of the day over there, trudging through the snow in his woods and talking about what we were going to do over Christmas Break, which is exactly seventeen days away.

I left earlier than I usually would, around four, because the sun goes down early now and I don't like to walk home by myself in the dark. I came in through the front door, kicked off my boots, threw my coat on the floor, and ran up to my bedroom, where I was going to get my backpack out and start working on some homework that's due tomorrow for Mr. Dryer's class. It's Algebra, which, along with all other types of Math, I hate and am bad at, so I probably wouldn't have kept on it for too long anyway, but I noticed something when I walked in my room that completely took my attention away from anything else.

Atop the working desk that Mom and Dad got me for Christmas several years ago was what looked like a regular Selectric typewriter, like the kind Dad has in his office, with a glass pane attached to the back.

Laying atop the keyboard was a note in sleek, shining text, uniform and with no ink smudges.

I read it:

Aaron,

You may not understand much of what you are being asked, or what you are being told, but you must trust in the truth and the rightness of the course you are to walk. You are living in strange and important times, times that will determine the fate of many millions of people.

This will seem unbelievable to you, but there will come a day when you will look back upon these years and see how pivotal they were in giving rise to unconscionable tragedy and glorious deliverance.

The task set to you is to share, in your own voice, your thoughts and dreams, the world as you experience it. Though you cannot yet fathom it, these words will help not only you as you approach young manhood, but other souls undergoing like trials in a distant but similar time.

The machine before you is a special one, a diary to the stars. Whatever you enter there shall be transmitted into a medium where it can be accessed by untold masses, any of whom may see your writings though they not know you.

The glass plate here affixed will enable you to see what you have written, and whatever others may think of it.

The camera hidden in the top of your closet is a special instrument as well--any of the pictures you take with it will transpose themselves into the same medium as your journal entries, going wherever you bid them.

Your only job is to live, as best you can in the era to which you have been born, and to record the journey of that living. In the coming years you and many others will be confronted with great moral dilemmas, and the false choices of patriotism or treason, piety or heresy, intolerance or abnormality.

Be strong through this, and share that strength with as many as you can.

Tell no one of this venture. Once you have finished using them, remove the typewriter and the camera to your closet. If you honor that tenet, they shall never be found, nor destroyed. Good luck.

A Friend

Beneath all this was a section entitled "Instructions" that I didn't even bother looking at.

I assumed that this was John playing a stupid joke on me. He's fifteen and he loves practical jokes, but his writing isn't as good as what's in that note, so I figured he probably had help with it if he did it. He could've gotten someone he knows to type out the note, and then he himself would have been capable of screwing a glass sheet onto the back of a typewriter.

When I checked in my closet for the camera, though, it was actually there. It was small, smaller than any camera I've ever seen, black, and square. When I pressed a button on its top a plastic door opened and a lens rose up from within it like a missile readying for launch.

I was astonished, and snapped a picture of myself.

To my amazement, the typewriter emitted a high eletrical chirp--it had turned on.

The screen was alight with a strange image, but there was no projector set up anywhere in the room. The image, which looked a lot like a set of folders in a filing cabinet, was coming from the screen itself, as if it were a television. Yet it was only a half-inch thick piece of glass. I looked behind it and nothing was casting the figure, so I guessed the typewriter had to be generating it.

I went back to the letter to see what the instructions said.

It advised me to follow the guidelines on the screen, and to use a small box to the right of the typewriter to "click" different images.

I moved the box, and was shocked when a blue dot made its way across the screen, following the box's trajectory. The two things were connected!

By this time I'd come to the conclusion that John wasn't up to so elaborate a gimmick, so now I'm actually taking directions from a little piece of paper and feeling stupid and wondering if anyone will ever read this, or if that's even possible. I've spent the last five hours figuring this out and looking at different things I've done on the screen.

I saw that there was a space for me to put a picture, so I snapped a photo of my school ID and it materialized on the screen. It's like magic.

Anyway, the instructions in the letter said I should tell you about myself, so here it goes.

My name is Aaron. I am sixteen years old. The typewriter must be a little bit off, though, because my profile lists me as being sixty-one. Maybe it got the 1 and the 6 mixed up. But anyway, I was born on May 1, 1948, in Washington, D.C. My dad was working there then, and after I came along he decided that the city was no place to raise a child so we moved out to the suburbs in Virginia.

It probably doesn't matter if I say exactly where I live, seeing as I'm putting all this information into a typewriter in my bedroom, but just in case anyone does happen to somehow get ahold of this I'm not giving my address, or my last name. That would be creepy.

After we moved here, my brother John was born on November 21, 1949. Then came my brother Lewis on May 9, 1955; and my sister Lynn on June 8, 1963. John just turned fifteen, Lewis is nine, and Lynn is only a year old.

My mom and dad are pretty nice, but sometimes we don't really get along.

My dad's name is Dan and my mom's name is Mary. Dad was born on December 1, 1923, and he just turned forty-one. Mom was born May 20, 1924, and she's forty now.

Dad owns a big company that builds houses and decks and does repairs and things like that, and he has dozens of overseers who report directly to him. I think he's pretty important, because he makes a lot of money and he talks on the phone a lot, and he always has to sign papers and approve other people's ideas before they're allowed to go ahead. His company does business here and in Maryland. My friends say he looks mean, because he's kind of fat and he's going bald and his skin is red, but once they get to know him they all like him better because he's funny. He's very liberal, even though he doesn't seem like he would be, and he says the Negroes should have equal rights with everyone else.

I don't know that many Negroes, and none go to my school, but the woman who cleans our house is named Nell and she's a Negro and she's very friendly, so I think he's right. One time when I was younger I said something I heard in school about Negroes being not as good as white people, and he got really angry and yelled at me.

He asked me if I'd like to get treated badly because I'm skinny, or because I like to read, or because my hair is long and it makes me look like a girl. That hurt my feelings a lot. Was it fair, he asked, that people should act as if I'm beneath them just because I'm different? Of course, I do get harassed and made fun of for these reasons, so I saw that he was right and I felt ashamed.

President Johnson got Congress to pass an act this summer making it illegal to segregate the Negroes and a lot of people here were really angry, but Mom and Dad were happy about it.

Mom is nice, too, and very smart. She went to college in fact, which is where she met Dad.

As for me, I'm a little strange. I'm tall but very skinny, and I have long hair that the other kids make fun of me for, but I like it this way and the fact that they tease me makes me all the more determined to keep it. I like singing, and reading, and writing, and music ("All My Loving" is my favorite song ever), and poetry, and my friends, and politics, too, which my parents are also addicted to.

Dad took me with him to the polls last month. He knew how much I wanted to vote, so when the people there said I wasn't allowed in he lied that he had poor eyesight and they let me go with him to help him vote! I got to mark the ballot and everything.

"You got half a vote in this election, young man," he said afterward. "Just don't tell anyone."

I didn't.

It's things like that that confuse me, because one minute he can be so mean and seemingly heartless that I never want to talk to him again, and then the next he'll do something really considerate and all of my anger will go away until he transgresses again.

I'm really glad President Johnson won the election, because Goldwater was a fanatic who wanted to bomb the Soviet Union and said that the East Coast (us) should be sawed off from the rest of the country.

I loved President Kennedy and when he was shot I cried for a whole day, and so did Mom and John and Lewis. Lynn, who was too young to know what was going on, saw us upset and then she started crying, too, even though she was only a baby. Dad is the only one who didn't cry, but I think he was very sad on the inside.

My best friends are Dan, Alex, Christina, Amy, and some other people, too.

I have to go, though, because it's 9:30 and I have to get up early tomorrow for school.

If anyone's out there...I'm trying. Can you hear me?